This fragment was once part of a temple relief depicting the king, Amenhotep I, grasping bound captives by the hair. The seemingly identical appearance of the bearded captives functioned as visual shorthand for foreign enemies of the Egyptian state. Closer inspection, however, reveals some individualized features, including different beard styles.The open mouth of the captive on the far right builds the feeling of tension and suspense in the scene, which when complete, showed the king in the moment before smiting his enemies to maintain order, or maat.

The Egyptian king smiting the kingdom’s enemies was a popular motif throughout all of Egyptian history, with its earliest antecedents found in the late fourth millennium BCE.

This fragment of a relief depicts one of several clusters of bound prisoners, once grasped by the hair by a now-lost figure of a king. The symbolic meaning of the scene is that the king, embodiment of order, sub-jugates chaos, in the form of enemy captives. The king holds the captives fast in one hand while brandishing his mace for their slaughter with the other. This image of royal power is a standard temple motif in Egyptian art. Once thought to be a fake, this fragment was recently found to fit perfectly into a large scene of enemy slaughter at the Temple of Karnak, thus validating the piece.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. “Selected Works”. Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2008.